A popular form of action to curb child labor and uphold international labor standards in general is a `product boycott' by consumers. There are labeling agencies that inform us if, for instance, a carpet or a hand-stitched soccer ball is free of child labor. The presence of a consumer boycott...

Some studies on child labor have shown that greater land wealth leads to higher child labor, thereby casting doubt on the hypothesis that child labor is caused by poverty. This paper argues that the missing ingredient is an explicit modeling of the labor market. We develop a simple model which...

A randomly selected treatment group of households in Gurgaon, India was informed whether (or not) their drinking water had tested positive for fecal contamination using a simple test costing about $0.50. Households that were not initially purifying their water, and were told that their drinking...

Much of economics is built on the assumption of individuals being driven by self-interest and economic development as an outcome of the free play of such individuals. On the few occasions that economics recognizes the role of altruism and trust, the tendency is to build these from the axiom of...

The demand for environmental quality is often presumed to be low in developingcountries due to poverty. Less attention has been paid to the possibility that lack of awareness about the adverse health effects of environmental pollution could also keep the demand low. We use a household survey...

We use the nation-wide policy of randomly allocating village council headships to women to identify the impact of female political leadership on the governance of projects implemented under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India. Using primary survey data, we find more program...

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India mandates 1/3rd of beneficiaries to be women and equal wages across gender. We study its impact on children's educational attainment via women's increased access to labor market opportunities. Using child level panel data, and taking...

This paper assesses the effect of transition from monthly distribution of free food grains to the daily provision of free cooked meals to school children on enrollments and attendance in a rural area of India. School panel data allow a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to address...